You’re bound to see anything on Miami Beach, but on Saturday afternoon, residents and tourists were confronted by a walking horror movie.
“You know, it’s funny. Somebody just told me, they said, ‘It gets a little crazy at night,’ but I didn’t expect to have somebody welding an ax coming down the road,” a witness told Miami Beach Police, according to WSVN 7News Miami.
John Harper, from El Lago, Texas — “a very brazen and dangerous individual,” police said — was arrested after he was spotted chasing a woman down a busy street with an ax. He grabbed the tool out of his truck after the woman told him to stop shouting a racist expletive.
Investigators said the victim, who’s not seen in the footage, told officers, “She observed a white male walking eastbound screaming the [N-word].” When she confronted him and yelled at him to stop, she said he “picked up an ax from the truck bed and began to walk fast towards her as he was swinging the ax and screaming at her.”
When officers arrived, witnesses explained what had happened and where Harper had gone.
“We actually were the ones that called,” said a witness. “We saw him get (the ax) out of the back of the pickup truck up here.”
“I was just taking pictures of the whole thing. I’ve got pictures of the whole thing,” another witness told responding officers.
The harrowing scene was replayed for officers and can be overheard from police body camera footage.
“He came running down the sidewalk,” said a bystander, directing police to the suspect.
“A lot of witnesses and passersby, they were in fear for their lives as well,” said Miami Beach Police Officer Christopher Bess.
One bystander described seeing Harper chasing the woman with the ax over his shoulder.
“When he heard you guys coming, he dropped it and then took off running,” he said.
After searching for a few minutes, officers found the weapon.
“Dropped the ax over there in the street,” said an officer.
“Over here! There’s an ax on the floor!” said another officer.
Fortunately, Miami Beach Police Department’s ATV Unit was nearby. Harper was caught and handcuffed within minutes of the calls to 911.
Officers would soon discover Harper had been in trouble with the law before, earlier this year, following a similar incident.
“Hey, you say you’re out on bond for what, an assault?” said an officer.
“Yeah,” said Harper.
In January, Harper attacked and struck a woman with a forearm-strengthening exercise device in downtown Miami before being arrested. The attack was recorded on cellphone video.
Harper faces a new charge of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon on top of his previous charges of aggravated battery and other offenses. He remains behind bars at the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in West Miami-Dade.
